Events

Upcoming Events

StudentShapers Symposium with lunch - 11th October 

Full details to be confirmed.

Location: TBA

Time: 12-3PM

Previous events

Start of Summer workshops: 27th June (online option)

Time: 1-2PM

Location: Via Microsoft Teams

Start of Summer workshops: 28th June (in-person option)

Time: 12:30-1:30PM

Location: Room 060A Skempton building, South Kensington campus, directions here.

Recording of the online workshop can be found here.

Slides can be found here:  Start of Project Meeting presentation 27th June 2023

A copy of the Quick Start guide can be found here:  StudentShapers project quick start guide.   

StudentShapers Symposium: Partnership with diversity

Date: Wednesday 12th October 

Time: 2-4:30PM

Location: G34 and Foyer, Sir Alexander Fleming building, South Kensington campus

This year we will be focussing on showcasing projects that enhance aspects of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in the student experience. Efforts to develop this important aspect of our educational mission inevitably benefit all students and the projects will demonstrate the value in engaging in authentic partnership with a full range and diversity of students and student expertise that our student community can offer. Together, these partnerships can provide a powerful vehicle for longer term change and impact that both staff and students can benefit from.

Please find the Panopto link here, with timestamps for specific presentations below. 

Programme 

1400-1415 (Timestamp 00:04:10 to 00:14:10)

Welcome: Mike Streule, Director Imperial StudentShapers 

Introduction: Stephen Curry, Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: The EDI landscape across College and our Education 

Note: Project partners presented in alphabetical order. Highlighted partners will present the project, * denotes student partner. 

1420-1440 (Timestamp 00:14:35 to 00:37:45)

Making Mechanical Engineering more inclusive 

Linda Stringer, Julie Varley, Abdigani Nur*, Simrit Sekhon* 

There are many dimensions of diversity found in the MEng in Mechanical Engineering student body; our student partners focused on increasing inclusivity for two particular groups of students. We produced posters, written experiences and accessible thermodynamics notes to help neurodiverse students, and a new lecture on matrix transformations plus additional practise problem sheets was written which will help the students who have not studied Further Maths A Level. Increasing inclusivity should improve the learning experience for all learners.

1440-1500 (Timestamp 00:38:16 to 00:56:23)

Reviewing and enhancing the careers provision for students from Widening Participation backgrounds 

Richard Carruthers, Hana Ismail*, Benedict Moss*, Jessica Popplewell 

During the project we developed a thorough understanding of the challenges facing WP students in terms of graduate outcomes by conducting a focus group, survey as well as secondary research. We reviewed the current Careers Service resources and collaborated with the Careers team to make recommendations for improvements.

1500-1515: break

1515-1535 (Timestamp 01:15:33 to 01:45:54)

[Educational research] Exploring women physics lecturers’ teaching choices and decisions 

Bilgesu Aydin*, Jessie Durk, Adele Julia*, Isabel Rabey, Amy Smith,  

With no women lecturers for any of the core undergraduate courses in the Department of Physics for 2021/22, it is important to understand the choices and decisions women academics make when choosing whether to lecture. Qualitative interviews with 7 academic women, analysed through the lens of expectancy-value theory, revealed that they highly valued lecturing, including the interactions with students and developing students’ skills. Confidence and workload were seen as key factors when choosing whether to lecture – being familiar with the course material increased confidence and decreased the perceived workload cost of having to learn something new. 

 

1535-1545 (Timestamp 01:46:03 to 01:59:59)

  • [Work in progress: in conversation] Enhancing EDI in the chemical engineering curriculum : developing sustainable practices 

Deesha Chadha, Jerry Heng, Yuxin (Emerald) Sun* 

This project follows on from a preliminary data gathering exercise and is aimed at developing some sustainable practices in the department of chemical engineering which further enhance current EDI provisions. The project is not yet complete, but we have been working in partnership with one of our students in an effort to develop suitable content, and modes of delivery that better engage students with EDI in terms of integrating it into the curriculum. We discuss some of the ongoing opportunities and challenges associated with this work.  

 

StudentShapers project proposal writing workshops - 18th and 19th January 2023

StudentShapers supports students to engage in partnership with staff to work on projects which enhance the student experience, both within and outside of programme curricula. Students are supported with a bursary during projects. Do you have an idea that could have an impact on education at Imperial? 

In preparation for submitting proposals for funding, this workshop is intended to help build a robust partnership proposal. There will be an introduction at the start of the session but staff and students are invited to attend at any time on a drop-in basis with either their ideas or draft proposals for feedback. The aim is that participants are better equipped to propose successful projects that adopt a robust and effective partnership approach. 

  • Wednesday 18th January, 12:30-1:30 (Microsoft Teams meeting online)
  • Thursday 19th January, 12:30-1:30,  Meeting Room 1, 5th Floor, Sherfield Building, South Kensington campus. 

Presentation slides can be found here: StudentShapers Proposal Writing workshop Jan 2023.  

A recording of the online workshop can be found here.  

Summer Project symposium: 9th October 2019

Date: Wednesday 9th October, 2-6PM

Location: Pippard Lecture theatre, 5th Floor, Sherfield building, South Kensington campus. 

This will be an opportunity for participants of projects running over the Summer to summarise their experience in the form of presentations and discussion, as well as an occasion for thanks from the StudentShapers team. 

Published Schedule
TimePresentation
 13.45  Arrival opens
 14.00  Introduction by Mike Streule, Director Imperial StudentShapers and Simone Buitendijk, Vice Provost (Education)
 14.20 - 15.10  StudentShapers Project presentations

Curriculum development:

5 x 10 minutes
  • Luke Delmas and Jakub Radzikowski, Department of Chemistry: The Chemical Kitchen - a new approach to gaining laboratory skills
  • Tanvi Agrawal, Saad Muhammad* and Alexandra Pinto*, Department of Medicine: Implementing Imperial MedSTEP in the reviewed curriculum for Year 1 MBBS
  • Sam Cooper, Dyson School of Design Enginnering, Mathematics for Design Engineers: Integration of topics and differentiation of skills
  • Chris Hallsworth, Department of Mathematics: Learning Discovery in Statistics
  • Thibault Bertrand, Department of Mathematics: Peer Leaders in First year Induction
 15.10 - 15.20  Break
 15.25 - 15.45  Keynote talk: Camille Kandiko Howson, Associate Professor of Education
 15.45 - 16.25  StudentShapers Project presentations

Educational research and evaluation

4 x 10 minutes
  • Irene Kalkanis, Digital Learning Hub: Learning Analytics
  • Tiffany Chiu, Magda Charalambous, and Maja Wojtynska*, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship & Department of Life Sciences: Enhancement of Scholarship and Interdisciplinarity through Research Partnership for Imperial Students
  • Roel Schipper, Department of Civil and Environmental engineering: Evidence for better design education: measuring curriculum review effects in a quantitative way
  • Senita Mountjoy, Roxy Hughes, Shakeel Rahman and Yuri Aung*, Imperial College Collaborative Partnerships Office/ Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine: International Medical Placements: Eliciting Student Perspectives
 16.30  Wine and drinks Reception
 
Summary of the table's contents

Link here:  End of Summer StudentShapers symposium

Summer Project symposium: 21st October 2020 

Date: 21st October 

Time: 2-3:30PM 

Location: online via Microsoft Teams 

Following the summer vacation, and the peak of StudentShapers projects taking place the symposium will showcase a proportion of these projects to demonstrate the impactful outcomes across the College that can be achieved by adopting an authentic partnership approach across staff-student communities. The event will demonstrate some of the exciting developments across the college and provide attendees with ideas and insights for anyone considering working more closely with student partners in the next year, or developing a StudentShapers project. 

We will have three themed sessions:  

(Contributors for each presentation listed in alphabetical order, *denotes students) 

  • The impact of partnership 

Department of Aeronautics (Lien Chong*, Maha Khamlichi*, Errikos Levis, Amy Picton, Silvestre Pinho, Maria Ribera Vicent, Hayley Wong*,)

The Aeronautics department has largely transitioned to paperless teaching, with all students being issued tablets since 2018. This has opened up new options for the delivery of interactive and audio-visual content, alongside traditional written content. StudentShapers projects have created a range of resources which form part of a comprehensive e-learning approach and that are already being used for teaching and virtual labs. In addition, the processes for creating this original material have been recorded and constitute a solid foundation for further development across the MEng programme. Alongside this, StudentShapers have been engaged to improve wellbeing and community support while working remotely. Student led workshops and resources were developed from a student perspective and a survey gathered feedback and engaged the broader student community on remote working and settling in to ICL. Enhanced resources that all students can access on a Wellbeing and Community are hosted on a MS Teams page.  

  • Planning for the future: digital students and online learning
Shaffiat Dewan*, Gimeno Jesus*, Monika Pazio: Being a student in the digital age 
 

The presentation will explore our experiences of conducting educational research project about being a student in the Digital Age. We will explain the project, unpack lessons learnt in the process of partnership as well as present some data we collected and analysed about the role of technology in students' lives.

Timothy Heightman* & Thomas Hurkxens:  Augmented simulations: Physics Lab 

With a team of talented student developers, our group are creating a platform on which virtual and mixed reality learning experiences can be developed, allowing learners to visualise and interact in 3D in innovative ways and paving a new path for digital solutions in higher education. As a proof of concept, the group created a virtual optics lab capable of modelling high resolution diffraction phenomena. With more content on the way in the Imperial ecosystem and beyond, this medium is one to watch out for!

  • The nth dimension of partnership
Elizabeth Hauke, Alex Lipp*, Kasia Zukowska*: Partnership from planned to experienced curriculum (and beyond) 
 
The first year Change Maker modules use the UN sustainable goals as a loose framework to explore how global change is brought about and encourage students to consider their role in driving it. The emphasis is put on the partnership between students and staff in the classroom, shaping the learning experience and content of each group’s individual collaboration and developing a cooperative approach to assessment and feedback. This year we have been focussing on how this type of curriculum is experienced in practice, with ethnographic partnership research being conducted alongside the learning in the modules. 
 
Yasmin Andrew and Anthea MacIntosh-LaRoque*: Redesigning Informal Learning Spaces in Blackett building 
 
A student led project to refurbish three mixed use spaces in the Blackett building was completed over the 2020 Summer.  The focus of the work was to embody functionality and physics identity into the plans for the areas.  The research and consultation-based methodology used to inform the process will be presented, along with final designs.

Please book to attend using the available EventBrite link.   Please note you will receive a link to the Microsoft Teams meeting the day prior to the Symposium if you are on our attendance list.  

Find the Microsoft stream link here. 

CHERSnet: Working with students as partners in higher education: Rationale for the approach and opportunities for learning and dissemination

Location: Room 7, Seminar and Learning Centre, 5th Floor, Sherfield building

Time: 11:00-13:00

** Slides from the event** - CHERSnet.